Most Canadians know that Stephen Harper has had a tremendous impact on the country since becoming prime minister in 2006. But few have the in-depth knowledge of how far his transformation has gone -- what has already been done, and what the consequences will be in the future.

This book brings together Canadian experts in a wide variety of areas. The …

If a city is its people, and its people are what they eat, then shouldn’t food play a larger role in our dialogue about how and where we live? The food of a metropolis is essential to its character. Native plants, proximity to farmland, the locations of supermarkets, immigration, the role chefs can and should play in society – how a city nouris …

Everybody loves the movies. But a movie about the colour blue, or an isolated mountain range, or a man grown so thin the world floats through his perfect transparency? 'You know what would be really great - to make a two-hour movie about Taylor Mead's ass,' remarked Andy Warhol, the most notorious fringe filmer of them all. Welcome to the strange …

Steve Reinke is one of the most intriguing artists we've got; his scope is enormous, his imagination absolutely singular. His video art — The Hundred Videos, Anthology of American Folk Song, Anal Masturbation and Object Loss — practically define the genre.

Reinke tells us, in 'Kitchener–Berlin,' his appreciation of Philip Hoffman's film of th …

Will was pretty much the perfect role model.' - Beth Ditto, The Gossip

In the spring of 2010, Toronto lost one of its most important queer civic heroes when local artist, DJ, activist, impresario, promoter, party-thrower, café operator, community-builder and lover Will Munro died of brain cancer at the unfathomably young age of 35. Famed for his s …

City Hall proclaimed 2006 the Year of Creativity. 'Live With Culture' banners flap over the city. And across the city, donors are ponying up millions for the ROM and the AGO. Culture's never had it so good. Right?

The State of the Arts explores the Toronto arts scene from every angle, applauding, assailing and arguing about art in our fair burg. Th …

Anagnorisis, or recognition, has played a central role in the arts and humanities throughout history. It is a universal mode of knowledge in literature and the arts; in sacred texts and scholastic writing; in philosophy; in psychology; in politics and social theory. Recognition is a phenomenon and a fulcrum that makes these discourses possible. To …

What is the best way to tell a story?

In this anthology, the first-ever collection of essays by innovative, cutting-edge writers on the theme of narration, forty of the continent's top experimental writers describe their engagement with language, storytelling and the world. The anthology includes renowned writers like Kathy Acker, Dennis Cooper, Nic …

Since the election of Mayor David Miller in November 2003, Toronto has experienced a wave of civic pride and enthusiasm not felt in decades. At long last, Torontonians see their city as a place of possibility and potential. Visions of a truly workable, liveable and world-class city are once again dancing in citizens’ heads. In the past two years, …

'Like all my favourite art, these paintings bring out that covetous feeling – I want to wear them, dance to them, show them off as an example of how life feels to me: dirty, dumb, terrifying, spiritual and so funny.' – Miranda July

'In a time of ironic detachment, Margaux Williamson is a painter of extreme candour, but the violence of her vision …

Nominated for a 2014 Saskatchewan Book Award

Françoise Mouly, an editor and publisher of uncommon taste and creativity, and an artist in her own right, has spent nearly four decades transforming comics. With her husband, Art Spiegelman, Mouly founded the landmark magazine RAW, which showcased artists such as Ben Katchor, Chris Ware, Charles Burns …

More trees. Hydrogen-fuelled cabs. Urbiology. A new model of taxation. Solar panels on big-box stores. The art of salvage. Composters for dog poo in city parks. Retrofitting our urban slabs. Gardening the Gardiner. Ravine City. What would make Toronto a greener place?

In the third volume of the uTOpia series, dozens of imaginative Torontonians think …

Drained by a half-dozen major watersheds, cut by a network of deep ravines and fronting on a Great Lake, Toronto is a city dominated by water. Recently, the trend of fettering Toronto’s water and putting it underground has been countered by persistent citizen-led efforts to recall and restore the city’s surface water. In HTO: Toronto’s Water …

‘The streets are full of admirable craftsmen, but so few practical dreamers.’ – Man Ray

Welcome to the world of fringe movies. Here, artists have been busy putting queer shoulders to the wheels, or bending light to talk about First Nations rights (and making it funny, to boot), or demonstrating how a personality can be taken apart and put back …

"I have tried to make a sketch or a model in several dimensions of the potency of Arendt’s idea of invisibility, the necessary inconspicuousness of thinking and reading, and the ambivalently joyous and knotted agency to be found there. Just beneath the surface of the phonemes, a gendered name rhythmically explodes into a founding variousness. And …

Revised and updated with 25 new essays, the fourth edition of this bestselling collection brings together more than 30 leaders in the field of educational theory. An engaging exploration of the ideas and trends shaping education in today’s classrooms, Philosophy of Education includes topics on high-stakes testing, consumerism in education, and so …

In spite of its disturbing implications, the impact of climate change on our physical environment can be difficult for us to understand or imagine. Moving from a memoir of a journey through an abundant yet fragile natural world to the daunting scientific evidence that climate change will lead to the degradation of nature and upheaval within society …

Winner, City of Victoria Butler Book Prize

Finalist, Charles Taylor Prize for Literary Non-Fiction

Nominated for the BC National Award for Canadian Non-Fiction

Afflictions & Departures is a collection of first-person experiential essays. However, this is not the realm of traditional memoir—in addition to incidents and feelings recaptured from memory …

Bringing creativity into mainstream educational practice has become a mantra among educators. But what does creative practice in education really look like? Take a journey around the globe with educator and artist Robert Kelly to witness innovative creative practice in action, with examples from early childhood to post-secondary levels.

Through sto …

In the crucial discussion of Aboriginal education in Canada, there are two distinct schools of thought: parallelism and integrationism. For the first time in one volume, leading thinkers on both sides share their perspectives, allowing readers to examine this complex and emotionally charged issue from all angles.

Parallelism argues for Aboriginal s …

How should the project of cultural studies change for the twenty-first century? Does theory have general application? How should we evaluate revolutions? How should we define countries, like China, on the margins of modernity and post-modernity? Is a neo-Orientalism emerging in today's world?

These are questions Shaobo Xie and Wang Fengzhen ask a pa …

Politics and Literature shows how important insights about genocide, poverty, state violence, world terrorism, the clash of civilizations, and other phenomena haunting the world at the turn of the millennium can be derived from contemporary novels. Keren demonstrates ways in which fictional literature can provide new perspectives on the complexitie …

Does history matter any more? In an era when both the past and memory seem to be sources of considerable interest and, frequently, lively debate, has the academic discipline of history ceased to offer the connection between past and present experience that it was originally intended to provide? In short, has History become a bridge to nowhere, a st …

A CNQ Editors' Book of the Year

A Dropped Threads-style anthology, assembling original and inspiring works by some of Canada's best younger female writers — such as Heather Birrell, Saleema Nawaz, Susan Olding, Diana Fitzgerald Bryden, Carrie Snyder, and Alison Pick — The M Word asks everyday women and writers, some of whom are on the unconventi …

There is a dreamlike quality to many of the stories in this new collection from Wayne Curtis. In Wild Apples, he returns to familiar themes of love and longing, and the push-pull emotions which inevitably accompany any attempt to break free of the ties that bind. Simple pleasures abound in these evocative stories, be it fishing on the river, gather …

Winner of the Newfoundland and Labrador Writers' Association Prize for Non-Fiction

Mary Pratt is famous throughout Canada for her luminous paintings and prints. Her 1995 exhibition, The Art of Mary Pratt: The Substance of Light, drew record-breaking crowds on its tour of Canada. It also resulted in an unprecedented amount of press coverage on the bi …

downstream: reimagining water brings together artists, writers, scientists, scholars, environmentalists, and activists who understand that our shared human need for clean water is crucial to building peace and good relationships with one another and the planet. This book explores the key roles that culture, arts, and the humanities play in supporti …

These essays represent a multidisciplinary approach to the study of religion and, especially, Judaism.

Setting aside common scholarly concerns with source criticism and history of interpretation, Shimon Levy argues that in Numbers 11 the redactor has forged diverse elements into a unity. Observing that much of what is said about Second Commonwealth …

How do we deal with difference personally, interpersonally, nationally? Can we weave a cohesive social fabric in a religiously plural society without suppressing differences?

This collection of significant essays suggests that to truly honour differences in matters of faith and religion we must publicly exercise and celebrate them. The secular/sacr …

A collection of readings in Russian philosophical thought.

"Traditions in Contact and Change" was the theme of the fourteenth quinquennial congress of the International Association for the History of Religions. This selection from 450 papers by scholars form all over the world address the theme.

Section One, "Indian Traditions and Western Interactions," treats subjects ranging from the flood story in Vedic …

Myth and Reality in Irish Literature offers a rich collection of essays covering a wide spectrum of Irish literature from the early medieval saints and scholars to twentieth century writers such as Joyce and Beckett. Lady Gregory, Synge, Yeats, O'Casey and Myles na Gopaleen are among the poets, playwrights, critics, and authors treated in the book. …

The result of a dialogue between poets and scholars on the meaning and making of the sacred, this book endeavours to determine how the sacred emerges in sacred script as well as in poetic discourse. It ranges through scholarship in areas as apparently disparate as postmodernism and Buddhism. The perspectives developed are various and without closur …

These twelve essays, together with the editor's introduction, examine the relationship of ideology to philosophy and politics. Part one deals with theoretical underpinnings of ideology: definitions are posited, and the relationship of ideology to thought itself, to use and abuse of theory, to social theory, to the epistemology of politics, to techn …

Written in tribute to one of the foremost Catholic theologians in the English-speaking world, the essays in The Promise of Critical Theology address the question: Can critical theology secure its critical operation without undermining its foundation in religious tradition and experience? Is “critical theology” simply an oxymoron when viewed fro …

This book contains, almost without change in content or style, the Annie Kinkead Warfield Lectures delivered at Princeton Theological Seminary in February, 1974. The theme of the lectures has been well worked over by contemporary theologians from almost every conceivable angle of Christian thought. Yet the subject was chosen because of a) a life-lo …

This book is a combination of five public lectures offered to the university and community during the academic year 1973–1974, given by the History Department of Wilfrid Laurier University. These were given by leading scholars in their individual fields and are published here.

The essays are on such topics as family life in New France, the origin …

While the textual focus of this collection of essays is the Spiritual Exercise of Ignatius of Loyola, the essays are much more than textual analyses; they deal with the tradition and institutions associated with Ignatian spirituality, with historical and philosophical perspectives on Ignatian spirituality, with the contemporary search for spiritual …

The figure of Jesus has fascinated Western civilization for centuries. As the year 2000 approaches, eliciting connections with Jesus’ birth and return, excitement grows — as does the number of studies about Jesus. Cutting through this mass of material, Whose Historical Jesus? provides a collection of penetrating, jargon-free, intelligently orga …

"It would be possible to argue," writes William Nicholls, "that the pivotal subject of debate among theologians for the past two hundred years has been the relationship between modernity and the Christian tradition."

What is modernity—a philosophical outlook or a set of ideas? What is modernization —a social process? Is modernity the same as sec …

The essays presented here intend to open afresh the complexity of the question of Paul’s dependence upon and continuity with Jesus. So much attention has been given in the past to this very difficult problem that new solutions are hard to find and suspect when offered. This collection, however, demonstrates diversity in approach, stance, and conc …

Few events are as complex as a social revolution—as the disputes among historians over the nature of the French Revolution attest. Was it Atlantic or national, bourgeois or sans-culotte, a product of poverty or prosperity, one revolution or several? The essays in this volume, in honour of an eminent student of the Revolution, demonstrate the comp …

Shortlisted, Hubert Evans Non-Fiction Award

Warm, imaginative, and thoroughly original, this memoir intertwines the mysteries of trees with the defining moments in the life of novelist and essayist Theresa Kishkan. For Kishkan, trees are memory markers of life, and in this book she explores the presence of trees in nature, in culture and in her pers …

Home, for me, was not a birthright, but an invention. It seems to me when we speak of home we are speaking of several things, often at once, muddled together into an uneasy stew. We say home and mean origins, we say home and mean belonging. These are two different things: where we come from, and where we are. Writing about belonging is not a simple …

Here we come to know Jane Austen by the company she keeps: her predecessors Fielding, Sterne, Lennox, and Burney, her contemporary Scott, and her successors Waugh and Amis—comic novelists all. And comedy is the connection between these twelve elegant essays by the distinguished academic Bruce Stovel, who most lovingly engages Austen herself throu …

Gifford's invigorating work of metacriticism and literary history recovers the significance of the "lost generation" of writers of the 1930s and 1940s. He examines how the Personalism of anarcho-anti-authoritarian contemporaries such as Alex Comfort, Robert Duncan, Lawrence Durrell, J.F. Hendry, Henry Miller, Elizabeth Smart, Dylan Thomas, and Henr …

“Notwithstanding their differing approaches—digital, archival, historical, iterative, critical, creative, reflective—the essays gathered here articulate new ways of seeing, investigating, and apprehending literature and culture.” – From the Preface

This collection of essays enriches digital humanities research by examining various Canadian …

“As soon as she was gone from this earth, I felt an overwhelming need for more of her. I had to find her again. But how do you find someone after they’re gone for good?”

After her mother succumbed to a rare form of dementia, Myrl Coulter turned the eulogy she had written for the funeral into a series of meditations on absence. The result is fi …

The essays in this book began as a contributions to a Summer Workshop arranged by the Calgary Institute for the Humanities, and haled at the University of Calgary from July 7 to 14, 1978. The Institute, which was founded by the University in 1976 for the encouragement of humanistic studies, has held such conferences each summer as a part of its pro …

Demers revives the memory of journalist Miriam Green Ellis, an all-but-forgotten feminist, suffragist, and agricultural reporter who documented the modernist sphere for over four decades and who refused to be confined to the "women's pages." With written material from the University of Alberta's Miriam Green Ellis Collection, accompanied by an exce …